Berlin's Dichotomies

Berlin is at once a massive yet tiny city. It is a city of ghosts and of vibrant life. It is a place where the East meets the West, and everything in between.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I came to Berlin. But the one thing I didn’t expect was to feel severely depressed for my first month of being there.
After weeks of pondering and agonizing over why I was feeling so down, I finally figured it out: I wasn’t able to ground myself. I was lost. And yet I wasn’t. That was it. Berlin has so many dichotomies, that I wasn’t sure how to feel half the time. There is a constant shift from “hot” to “cold” and my body wasn’t sure how to react.
Most Berliners speak some English, to the point where one can be deceived into thinking that they don’t need to learn Deutsch. Big mistake. While it’s a total blessing to communicate in English while in a foreign country, one has to be aware that all media, websites, signs, and vital information is not in English. Germany is not a bilingual country, even though it sometimes appears to be. Mein Deutsch ist schlect, but I thought I could get by without knowing the language. In reality, one can just get by in Berlin with only speaking English. But if you want any level of success, knowing Deutsch is crucial.
Berlin has so much to offer, but when you just arrive, it’s almost too much. Where do you start? As a dancer, there was a million studios, instructors, and venues to choose from, but it was hard to get an “in”. Even when you think you have an “in”, it’s really just the tip of the iceberg. For every club you’ve been to, there are a hundred that you don’t even know about.
There is also a contrast between East and West Berlin, and at the same time a unity amongst all Berliners. So, where to live? I still haven’t figured that one out, although I have found some neighborhoods that I love. Neukölln and Kreuzburg are my favorite, but I love Mitte and Charlottenburg and Prenzlauer berg, as well. And each neighborhood offers a totally different experience, so it’s a tough decision.
There are way too many dichotomies to list. What I do find comfort in is knowing that I’m not the only one who has felt depressed upon arriving in Berlin. I met a singer/song writer named Orit Shimoni. She wrote a wonderful song called "Sadder Music" that sums up exactly how I was feeling. It was a great moment to be sitting outside at a picnic table on a hot summer night, surrounded by people from all walks of life, listening to Orit spill her soul about Berlin. It’s always nice knowing there is someone to whom I can relate.
After being in Berlin for three months, the depression has passed. I love the city, and all of its quirks and charms. And I sympathize with Berlin. Despite being over 700 years old, Berlin is somewhat like a teenager with an identity crisis. Is the city Gothic, punk, historical, modern, hip, rundown, or just content with being all of the above? Whichever the case, Berlin has a little something for everyone. You just have to be content with whatever the city throws your way.

Sparrenburg Castle

When I asked my friends in Berlin if there was anything to see while I was in Bielefeld, each one of them said that Bielefeld didn’t have much going on. Imagine my surprise, then, when I got to Bielefeld and people asked if I was going to see the castle. A castle? If that’s not something to see, I don't know what is. Maybe castles are just commonplace to most Germans, and that’s why my friends hadn’t mentioned it. Either way, I was thrilled. I had never been in a real castle.
The Sparrenburg Castle sits high on a hill, overlooking Bielefeld and beyond. A massive stone wall wraps around the interior, with a turret in four corners. Inside, the main halls have been reconstructed and now serve as a restaurant. A large turret is in the middle of the grounds, towering over everything. The great thing about the Sparrenburg Castle is that you can really explore it. There are tours that take you around the outside, through the inside, underground, and all the way to the top. What a view!
Sparrenburg is a good bang for your buck, too. The restaurant and the little food stand both charged a fair price for tasty cuisine and the tours were inexpensive (less than 4 euro). Parking and entrance to the castle are free.
A bit of the history? The guide I was given says that Sparrenburg was built in the early 1200s by Count Ludwig of Ravensburg and that it was home to the Count and his “entourage”. Which makes the Count sound like he was a rock star. Because when I think “entourage” I think of hot girls and groupies. But maybe that’s just me.
Throughout the centuries, Sparrenburg saw many changes in ownership and additions to its architecture. Sadly, the castle was pummeled by an air raid during WW II, but extensive renovations have made the castle almost like it was before.
While we were at Sparrenburg, there was a photoshoot for a wedding taking place throughout the grounds, and a bag pipe player in a kilt was playing by the bridge on the way into the castle. There was definitely a lot to see.

www.bielefeld.de
www.sparrenburg.info

Throwing Flames

The bar scene in Berlin never ceases to surprise me. There is a strange juxtaposition going on: the streets are quiet, peaceful even, and then you enter a bar and stumble upon a whole other world. Take Café Zapata, for instance. From outside, it looks like a rundown building, a bit of an eyesore amongst the upscale restaurants that surround it. A few interesting metal sculptures entice you to go into the bar, and suddenly you find yourself in a cavernous room with a band playing full force onstage. Exiting through the back leads you to a large, sandy area with several food trailers, tables, and another stage with another band. Spooky metal sculptures of demons, devils, and various creatures lurk in corners and atop the trailers.
What struck me as more odd than the sculptures was a claw-foot bathtub filled with what I presumed was water. My partner, Wilson, and I paused at the tub for a moment before shrugging our shoulders and walking over to where the outdoor band was playing. We had come to Café Zapata specifically to see our friends, the Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band. Halfway through their set they pulled me up on stage and had me dance. My high heels, the level of alcohol in my blood, the crowded stage, and the fact that I was wearing blue jeans resulted in a terrible performance on my part. Or maybe I’m just my own worst critic, because everyone else enjoyed it and even asked for an encore. I was feeling a little too tipsy, though, so I declined.
Then I went inside to use the bathroom (which was far more frightening than the sculptures) and when I walked back outside, there was a man in fire gear waving around a flame thrower. The bathtub hadn’t been filled with water, but with gasoline. And this flame thrower guy, he was raving like a lunatic, throwing flames all over the place and shouting things in broken English.
After his performance, he went through the crowd, asking for tips. Lots of people put money in, because you should never argue with a guy who has a flame thrower.
After all the chaos, Wilson and I called it a night. As we returned to the streets of Berlin, the quiet and calm of the night almost made me think that Café Zapata had been a dream, or at the very least, a drunken hallucination.

Rock-a-Belly

Call it what you will (my favourite label is “rock-a-belly”), but rock ‘n roll and belly dance make a great combination. The first time I pushed the genre was in 2006 with Wilson Gil and the Willful Sinners. The band commissioned myself and three other dancers (Jazmin, Julz, and Alex) to belly dance with machetes at one of their shows. As a bonus, the band also hired a fire eater. You can’t get much sexier than that- belly dancers, machetes, fire, and rock ‘n roll!
Since then, some of my best shows and choreography have involved rock music. If you think about it, the genre really works. Both rock music and belly dance can be sexy, edgy, raw, and full of energy. Just swap the head banging, skinny rock guy for an undulating, sultry woman. Not a bad trade if you ask me! (Kidding. I love those skinny rock guys).
The first show I produced in San Francisco featured “a night of belly dance and rock ‘n roll” and was a huge success (we sold out). I didn’t have a fire eater for that show, but I did have eleven dancers and two killer bands (Castles in Spain and The Ferocious Few). I wish there were some funny stories to tell of that evening, but everything went off without a hitch. And I guess that’s a good thing, because there’s always a slight chance that something could go wrong when mixing drunk, rowdy bar goers with scantily clad women. Luckily, everyone knew how to rock out in an appropriate manner- you can look, but DO NOT TOUCH the belly dancers!
My current project came to me via the social networking wonders of Facebook. A Middle-Eastern rock band from Palestine called “Khalas” emailed me, a Canadian belly dancer living in Berlin, to ask if I would dance to one of their songs and film it for their website. I am truly in love with online social networking and how it’s creating this wonderful web of artists from all over the world. How many cultures can we combine here? Well, the guy who’s going to be filming the video is part Egyptian, part French, and part several-other-nationalities, so apparently as many as we damn well please. That’s the beauty of pushing boundaries and combining genres that at first don’t appear to go together- what you get in the end is something international, something that breaks down stereotypes and culminates in a new sense of “togetherness”.
To see videos: Avaishya/FerociousFew
Avaishya/Alodiah/FerociousFew

Smoking Hookahs at Sandfuersten

There’s something about smoking a hookah that becomes increasingly addictive. All those anti-tobacco activists may get mad at me for promoting this, but hookah smoking is becoming one of my favourite pastimes. Especially when it involves hot belly dancers.
Last night, Wilson Gil and I went down to our favorite hookah bar- or shisha bar as they call it here- with our two new friends, Olga and Karim. Wilson has this brilliant idea for a travel show and Karim has offered to shoot the pilot.
What better place to showcase the unique glimpses that traveling gives you than in a hookah bar in a Turkish neighborhood in a German city? Sandfuersten is particularly interesting, too, as the entire floor is made up of sand. I’m not sure where they got the sand from, but I like to think that it was imported from some faraway desert. The belly dancer, however, was definitely not an import. Laura and I dance together in the same company, Zadiraks, and she is German born and raised. And is a Turkish cabaret belly dancer. Don’t you just love how the cultural boundaries cross?
Karim shot some great footage of Laura dancing in her red velvet and sequined costume, shimmying up a sand storm and eliciting smiles from all the happy, shisha-smoking customers. Wilson had talked me into dancing a set with her, too, but I felt that it was a little awkward. I’m a tribal belly dancer and this whole Oriental/Cabaret style is new to me. I kept getting distracted by the way Laura was moving her arms. I know that may sounds silly, but arms are an important part of belly dance (but I guess “arm dance” just didn’t have as nice a ring to it), and tribal style arms are much different than Turkish cabaret style arms. So, I ended up feeling a bit like a chicken, with my arms sticking out awkwardly as I tried to mimic Laura’s. My friends told me I looked great, but that’s just because they were focusing on the belly part of the dance.
We also got some cool footage of Wilson having a bad “shisha” trip. You can’t actually get high from smoking shisha, but it’s fun to make people think that you can. And we learned something last night. It’s poor etiquette to not use your own cap for your hookah. Of course, this brought up some rather phallic images. So, remember, practice safe hookah smoking and be sure to come prepared. It never hurts to keep an extra cap in your wallet- who knows, you might need the extra protection.